Late-minute preparations for Hurricane Sandy, the “frankenstorm” set to be the largest hurricane to ever hit the northeastern United States and Canada, intensified Monday as the monster storm shut down transportation, shuttered businesses and sent thousands scrambling for higher ground hours before its landfall.

About 50 million people from the Mid-Atlantic to Canada are in the path of the nearly 1,600-kilometre-wide storm, which forecasters said could be the largest to hit the mainland in U.S. history and will have a devastating landfall. It was expected to topple trees, damage buildings, cause power outages and trigger heavy flooding.

“We are certain that this is going to be a slow-moving process through a wide swath of the country, and millions of people are going to affected,” U.S. President Barack Obama said, speaking to reporters from the White House Monday afternoon.

The storm is bearing down nearly directly upon New York City and the city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said Sandy’s full wrath could be felt by 6 p.m. today.

The storm surge in New York City from Sandy, which flooded Battery Park Monday morning, has already surpassed that of last year’s Hurricane Irene.

“Don’t be fooled, don’t look out the window and say, it doesn’t look so bad,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said. “The worst is still coming.”

Officials have been stark in their warnings, as their have been more than 60 deaths already attributed to the hurricane, and say it is likely there will be more.

“There will undoubtedly be some deaths that are caused by the intensity of this storm, by the floods, by the tidal surge, by the waves. The more responsibly citizens act, the fewer people will die,” Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley told reporters.

On Monday morning, the Nova Scotia-built tall ship HMS Bounty sunk in high seas off the North Carolina coast. Fourteen sailors were rescued but two are missing in very difficult conditions for rescuers.

The Canadian Hurricane Centre says hurricane Sandy will be felt from the Maritimes all the way to Ontario.

Centre spokesman Bob Robichaud says Sandy is forecast to dump 50 to 100 millimetres of rain for the western Maritimes from Tuesday into Wednesday.

He says parts of southern Ontario could see 30 to 50 mm of rain as the storm passes through, though some areas in that region could see higher amounts.

LIFE THREATENING STORM SURGE FOR NEW JERSEY, NEW YORK

The U.S. stock market suffered its first weather-related closure in 27 years and many schools and businesses were closed in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.

While the centre of the storm was not expected to make landfall until Monday night near Atlantic City, New Jersey, it was already creating dangerous conditions and forcing rescue workers into action.

Off North Carolina, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued 14 of the 16 crew members who abandoned the replica tall ship HMS Bounty, using helicopters to lift them from life rafts. The Coast Guard continued to search for the two missing crew members about 250 kilometres from the eye of the storm.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the Category 1 storm had strengthened as it turned toward the coast and was moving at 30 km per hour. It was expected to bring a “life-threatening storm surge,” coastal hurricane winds and heavy snow in the Appalachian Mountains, the NHC said.

Forecasters said Sandy was a rare, hybrid “super storm” created by an Arctic jet stream wrapping itself around a tropical storm.

Nine U.S. states have declared a state of emergency.

With the election eight days away, Obama canceled a campaign event in Florida on Monday in order to return to Washington and monitor the U.S. government’s response to the storm.

Sandy killed 66 people in the Caribbean last week before pounding U.S. coastal areas as it moved north.

While Sandy does not pack the punch of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, it could become more potent as it approaches the U.S. coast.

Winds were at a maximum of 150 kilometres an hour, the NHC said in its 11 a.m. report, up from 75 mph nine hours earlier. It said tropical storm-force winds reached as far as 800 kilometres from the center.

Several feet of water flooded streets in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, which could be right in the target zone of the storm.

Local residents said police knocked on doors on Sunday, reminding everyone there was a mandatory evacuation. While the police took names, they allowed residents to stay at their own risk.

“If power goes that’s a problem,” said John Brunhammer, 40, a recruiter from Lewes, Delaware, who had come to see the waves crashing up to the dune line at Rehoboth Beach. “This area isn’t known for prompt utility service.”

New York and other cities and towns closed their transit systems and ordered mass evacuations from low-lying areas ahead of a storm surge that could reach as high as 11 feet.

By early Monday, water was already topping the seawall in Manhattan’s Battery Park City, one of the areas evacuated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

All U.S. stock markets will be closed on Monday and possibly Tuesday, the operator of the New York Stock Exchange said late on Sunday, reversing an earlier plan that would have kept electronic trading going on Monday.

The United Nations, Broadway theaters and New Jersey casinos were forced to close, and more than two-thirds of the East Coast’s oil refining capacity was in the process of shutting down.

THE SUPER STORM

Officials ordered people in coastal towns and low-lying areas to evacuate, often telling them they would put emergency workers’ lives at risk if they stayed.

At 11 a.m., the NHC said Sandy was centered about 320 kilometres southeast of Atlantic City and about 400 kilometres miles south-southeast of New York City.

The minimum central pressure – a key measure of a cyclone’s strength – was recorded at 946 millibar overnight, matching the lowest pressure ever measured in the United States north of Cape Hatteras. The only previous time such a low measurement was recorded was in 1938, when the “Long Island Express” ripped up the coast, meteorologists said.

The storms could cause up to 12 inches of rain in some areas, as well as up to 1 metre of snowfall in the Appalachian Mountains from West Virginia to Kentucky.

Worried residents in the hurricane’s path packed stores, searching for generators, flashlights, batteries, food and other supplies in anticipation of power outages. Nearly 284,000 residential properties valued at $88 billion are at risk for damage, risk analysts at CoreLogic said.

Transportation systems shut down in anticipation. Airlines canceled flights, bridges and tunnels closed, and national passenger rail operator Amtrak suspended nearly all service on the East Coast. The U.S. government told non-emergency workers in Washington, D.C., to stay home.

Utilities from the Carolinas to Maine reported late Sunday that a combined 14,000 customers were already without power.

The second-largest oil refinery on the East Coast, Phillips 66’s 238,000 barrel per day (bpd) Bayway plant in Linden, New Jersey, was shutting down and three other plants cut output as the storm affected operations at two-thirds of the region’s plants.

Oil prices slipped on Monday, with Brent near $109 a barrel.

While Sandy’s 90 mph winds were not overwhelming for a hurricane, its exceptional size means the winds will last as long as two days.

“This is not a typical storm,” Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett said. “It could very well be historic in nature and in scope.”